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The Royal Marine Murderer

The Huffington Post UK

Posted: 10/11/2013 22:43

Like the majority of the UK, I was disturbed by the recent conviction of a Royal Marine Commando, charged with murder. However, as much as the conviction in the eyes of the law and polite society is correct, and the law as we know must be upheld, it still leaves an extremely unpleasant taste in the mouth, for there is much more to the background of these incidents than meets the eye. It may be open and shut in the legal sense, but is not open and shut in the moral and ethical sense. The test maybe the law, but the proving ground is the battlefield. Now before you start getting all excited into thinking I am about to justify murder, wait one second and consider if you will some social mitigation.

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The murder happened five months into an arduous six-month tour of Helmand province in 2011 with Marines A, B and C based at a command post. Their task was to bring stability and security to Helmand. Against this backdrop, the threat posed by so called enemy combatants determined to rid Afghanistan of ISAF forces continued as the annual fighting season began that summer. Every day patrols would come under attack.

The troops were expected to treat injured insurgents with dignity and respect. Those are the rules set out by international law, the Geneva Convention and the rules set out by the British Military, which we all as service personnel try to abide by. Those are the rules and rightly so.

Marine B was under attack every single day and there had been 10 casualties in just one 24-hour period.

Marine C said the deaths of his troop commander and the serious injuries suffered by two others in the bomb blast were ‘pretty devastating’. “It was a serious loss to both our command post, the troop and the company four people that we were all good friends with, absolutely devastating really,” he said. Obviously the gravity of the situation had further instilled the reality – things could very easily spiral out of control.

In total, the British troops carried out thousands of patrols, deployed on 92-partnered operations with the Afghan National Security Forces, and discovered nearly 10 tonnes of explosive. They also built 40 new schools and eight new clinics.

So, what makes young men shoot wounded and dying combatants on the battlefield, and not afford them the gentlemanly conduct afforded the enemies of yesteryear? The Germans, Argentines, Italians have all felt the brunt of the might of the British Military machine, all had their vast armies dissembled by our gallant advancing troops. Did atrocities happen? Sure. Were they limited to the few? Of course. What then makes this incident different? Where is the gentlemanly conduct, the white flag of surrender, the handshake of truce, the cup of tea with the British POW camp commander as you are led to medical attention and then custody?

I will tell you where it is. It is on rose-tinted old movies portraying the good ole chaps and their advance to contact in a glamorous-romanticized-chivalrous era of crap.

In reality, war is bloody, noisy, messy, the stinking stench of cordite and burnt flesh, the noise of attack helicopters overhead and ‘danger close’ bombing runs, the fizz of shoulder mounted rockets and whacks of RPGs, the screams of the enemy and your own “man down” or “help me please” or “I’m bleeding to death”; the petrified voices of young soldiers trying to attract a medic to come to their aid.

Expeditionary war is a dirty, bloody, abhorrent affair that involves young men taking metal projectiles laced with fast burning metals to cause as much sharp and blunt penetrative trauma of their flesh as possible, involving occasionally a close with the enemy that involves drawing bayonets. The reader will probably be unaware that British troops have killed with the bayonet only this last year! Out of ammunition and forced into such close proximity with enemy combatants that the order to fix bayonets was given and acted upon.

The Taliban does not like surrendering. It hides behind non-combatants, and often lays down mortally injured where it fell with hidden grenades and booby traps waiting to take you with them to their paradise.

But what makes this story in Afghanistan all the more poignant is that we are not fighting a uniformed, gallant, courageous and disciplined enemy who wants to toil laboriously in combat by aligning itself with the Geneva Conventions or rules of war. They do not follow any rule or any law, save as for the one where it is acceptable to hide behind women and children, sit inside a mosque and use it as a fortification. Where an enemy that thinks nothing of executions in public of captured British and American soldiers or citizens, sawing their heads off whilst they are still alive and putting images all over the internet. Half the American and British soldiers I know do not want to be there, we are not fighting for the liberty of our sceptred isle, or for freedom. We are fighting a ridiculous insurgency with ridiculous odds, without much provenance to support the counter terrorism theory behind it all, and with cowards in Whitehall pretending to understand leadership. It is a game with us all pretending it is honorable and just. Well guess what? None of it is just, honourable or chivalrous. Get real people.

During this tour, where the murder occurred, seven marines were killed with more than 40 injured, many maiming injuries. Marines A, B and C saw the deaths of their company commander and another marine, who died together in a massive IED blast.

The Taliban hung body parts from dead and wounded Marines on trees. A mark of tribal, archaic and medieval misery not seen since Vietnam and Korea.

Marine B said he was under attack ‘every single day’ and there had been 10 casualties in just one 24-hour period. He said, “My friend’s legs had been put in a tree; I picked my mate’s brains up. I have no good memories of that tour. My way of coping with that was to put it away in a box at the back of my head and essentially as best as I could delete it from memory.”

So, do we need to ask what makes men with adrenaline coursing through their bodies in the spur of the moment commit acts like this? What made this marine shoot a man at close range in the heart, euthanising him from his already presumed fatal injuries? Let’s explore that for a moment.

We are raised to know that spitting at someone on the streets is assault; we are not witness to citizens dying from disease in the streets of London as our forefathers were. We live healthily and well with one of the longest life expectancies in the world. Yet every now and then, we send our brave, well adjusted, socially developed, none-spitting-at-people-in-the-street troops into combat with bayonets fixed and teeth gritted, to thrust, cut and penetrate enemies of the state. Medieval brutality occurs, a prime evil default setting comes to the fore, in stark contrast to back home. We send these troops into harms way to watch their friends cut up and hung in trees, to see their mates die by the roadside begging for their mothers. Then when one of them silences a dying fatally injured combatant with a single gunshot to his chest while blubbing a few stupid and bravado riddled words, showing off no doubt to the younger marines, we sentence him by the same standards we would back home. Murder. Life in prison.

We allow ourselves to enter these vacuums and then seek to legitimize, criminalize and militarize the same. That surely is the one true crime.

Let those who are without sin, cast the first stone.

Related articles

It’s business that really rules us now

The Guardian home

Monday 11 November 2013

Lobbying is the least of it: corporate interests have captured the entire democratic process. No wonder so many have given up on politics

Tony Blair interview‘Tony Blair and Gordon Brown purged the party of any residue of opposition to corporations and the people who run them. That’s what New Labour was all about.’ Photograph: Sean Dempsey/PA

It’s the reason for the collapse of democratic choice. It’s the source of our growing disillusionment with politics. It’s the great unmentionable. Corporate power. The media will scarcely whisper its name. It is howlingly absent from parliamentary debates. Until we name it and confront it, politics is a waste of time.

The political role of business corporations is generally interpreted as that of lobbyists, seeking to influence government policy. In reality they belong on the inside. They are part of the nexus of power that creates policy. They face no significant resistance, from either government or opposition, as their interests have now been woven into the fabric of all three main political parties in Britain.

Most of the scandals that leave people in despair about politics arise from this source. On Monday, for instance, the Guardian revealed that the government’s subsidy system for gas-burning power stations is being designed by an executive from the Dublin-based company ESB International, who has been seconded into the Department of Energy. What does ESB do? Oh, it builds gas-burning power stations.

On the same day we learned that a government minister, Nick Boles, has privately assured the gambling company Ladbrokes that it needn’t worry about attempts by local authorities to stop the spread of betting shops. His new law will prevent councils from taking action.

Last week we discovered that G4S’s contract to run immigration removal centres will be expanded, even though all further business with the state was supposed to be frozen while allegations of fraud were investigated.

Every week we learn that systemic failures on the part of government contractors are no barrier to obtaining further work, that the promise of efficiency, improvements and value for money delivered by outsourcing and privatisation have failed to materialise.

The monitoring which was meant to keep these companies honest is haphazard, the penalties almost nonexistent, the rewards can be stupendous, dizzying, corrupting. Yet none of this deters the government. Since 2008, the outsourcing of public services has doubled, to £20bn. It is due to rise to £100bn by 2015.

This policy becomes explicable only when you recognise where power really lies. The role of the self-hating state is to deliver itself to big business. In doing so it creates a tollbooth economy: a system of corporate turnpikes, operated by companies with effective monopolies.

It’s hardly surprising that the lobbying bill – now stalled by the House of Lords – offered almost no checks on the power of corporate lobbyists, while hog-tying the charities who criticise them. But it’s not just that ministers are not discouraged from hobnobbing with corporate executives: they are now obliged to do so.

Thanks to an initiative by Lord Green, large companies have ministerial “buddies”, who have to meet them when the companies request it. There were 698 of these meetings during the first 18 months of the scheme, called by corporations these ministers are supposed be regulating. Lord Green, by the way, is currently a government trade minister. Before that he was chairman of HSBC, presiding over the bank while it laundered vast amounts of money stashed by Mexican drugs barons. Ministers, lobbyists – can you tell them apart?

That the words corporate power seldom feature in the corporate press is not altogether surprising. It’s more disturbing to see those parts of the media that are not owned by Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere acting as if they are.

For example, for five days every week the BBC’s Today programme starts with a business report in which only insiders are interviewed. They are treated with a deference otherwise reserved for God on Thought for the Day. There’s even a slot called Friday Boss, in which the programme’s usual rules of engagement are set aside and its reporters grovel before the corporate idol. Imagine the outcry if Today had a segment called Friday Trade Unionist or Friday Corporate Critic.

This, in my view, is a much graver breach of BBC guidelines than giving unchallenged airtime to one political party but not others, as the bosses are the people who possess real power – those, in other words, whom the BBC has the greatest duty to accost. Research conducted by the Cardiff school of journalism shows business representatives now receive 11% of airtime on the BBC’s 6 o’clock news (this has risen from 7% in 2007), while trade unionists receive 0.6% (which has fallen from 1.4%). Balance? Impartiality? The BBC puts a match to its principles every day.

And where, beyond the Green party, Plaid Cymru, a few ageing Labour backbenchers, is the political resistance? After the article I wrote last week, about the grave threat the transatlantic trade and investment partnership presents to parliamentary sovereignty and democratic choice, several correspondents asked me what response there has been from the Labour party. It’s easy to answer: nothing.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown purged the party of any residue of opposition to corporations and the people who run them. That’s what New Labour was all about. Now opposition MPs stare mutely as their powers are given away to a system of offshore arbitration panels run by corporate lawyers.

Since Blair, parliament operates much as Congress in the United States does: the lefthand glove puppet argues with the righthand glove puppet, but neither side will turn around to face the corporate capital that controls almost all our politics. This is why the assertion that parliamentary democracy has been reduced to a self-important farce has resonated so widely over the past fortnight.

So I don’t blame people for giving up on politics. I haven’t given up yet, but I find it ever harder to explain why. When a state-corporate nexus of power has bypassed democracy and made a mockery of the voting process, when an unreformed political funding system ensures that parties can be bought and sold, when politicians of the three main parties stand and watch as public services are divvied up by a grubby cabal of privateers, what is left of this system that inspires us to participate?

Palin Trashes “Church Of Big Government”

by

November 11, 2013

Sarah-Palin-speaking-CPAC-SC-300x199As Christmas approaches, conservative Christians must once again witness an  attack on the true meaning of the Holiday as leftists redefine the season in  secular terms. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin addressed this trend, along with its underlying  causes, during a recent speech at a dinner hosted by the Iowa Faith and Freedom  Coalition.

Citing an ever-present “War on Christmas,” Palin identified the “politically  correct police out there” as the group responsible. Though the ongoing fight  against the Christian Holiday is an affront to believers across the nation, she  cautioned it is merely a “symptom of a bigger issue.”

While it is obvious leftists take issue with faith in God of the Holy Bible,  she pointed out the hypocrisy with which they show unwavering faith in the  state.

She called out the “scrooges who are too enlightened for religion,” marveling  at the fact the same activists show “zealot-like faith in the church of big  government.”

Exploring the topic further, Palin explained why putting faith in a  frequently fallible federal bureaucracy is detrimental for the future of this  nation. Primarily, she explained, the government does not deserve the people’s  trust because “it does not have faith in us.”

Furthermore, while its proponents claim the “best and brightest” minds are  working in the public sector, Palin pointed out numerous recent examples of  spectacular governmental failure or corruption.

Scandals involving ObamaCare, the National Security Agency, and the  administration’s politicization of last month’s government shutdown prove  Washington, D.C., is not the benevolent force many on the left claim.

“We’re not wards of state,” she said, “but free men and women who can live  good lives without D.C.’s appointed best and brightest telling us what to  do.”

Her most pointed indictment of this culture came when she called out the  “immoral and unscrupulous” politicians able to work at cross purposes with the  American public due to the complacency of a “lapdog media.”

Too many elected officials are “enriching themselves and their cronies while  their nation goes bankrupt,” she said, which amounts to nothing less than  “dictatorship.”

The left routinely mocks and disparages Sarah Palin, along with a few other  outspoken conservatives, in an effort to discredit her strong defense of  conservatism. Her ability to plainly address the virtues of individual liberty  and limited government make her a constant threat to the progressive power  structure.

 

Brzezinski admits: “Worldwide Resistance” is Derailing the New World Order

EndAllDisease.com

During a recent speech in Poland, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski warned fellow elitists that a worldwide “resistance” movement to “external control” driven by “populist activism” is threatening to derail the move towards a new world order.

Calling the notion that the 21st century is the American century a “shared delusion,” Brzezinski stated that American domination was no longer possible because of an accelerating social change driven by “instant mass communications such as radio, television and the Internet,” which have been cumulatively stimulating “a universal awakening of mass political consciousness.”

The former US National Security Advisor added that this “rise in worldwide populist activism is proving inimical to external domination of the kind that prevailed in the age of colonialism and imperialism.”

Brzezinski concluded that “persistent and highly motivated populist resistance of politically awakened and historically resentful peoples to external control has proven to be increasingly difficult to suppress.”

Brzezinski-“Populist-Resistance”-is-Derailing-the-New-World-Order

Although Brzezinski delivered his comments in a neutral tone, the context of the environment in which he said them allied to his previous statements would indicate that this is not a celebration of “populist resistance” but a lament at the impact it is having on the kind of “external control” Brzezinski has repeatedly advocated.

The remarks were made at an event for the European Forum For New Ideas (EFNI), an organization that advocates the transformation of the European Union into an anti-democratic federal superstate, the very type of bureaucratic “external control” Brzezinski stressed was in jeopardy in his lecture.

In this context, it must be understood that Brzezinski’s point about “populist resistance” being a major hindrance to the imposition of a new world order is more of a warning than an acclamation.

Also consider what Brzezinski wrote in his book Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technotronic Era, in which he advocated the control of populations by an elite political class via technotronic manipulation.

“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities,” wrote Brzezinski.

“In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason,” he wrote in the same book.

Brzezinski’s sudden concern about the impact of a politically awakened global population isn’t born out of any notion that he identifies with their cause. Brzezinski is the ultimate elitist insider, the founder of the powerful Trilateral Commission, a Council on Foreign Relations luminary and a regular Bilderberg attendee. He was once described by President Barack Obama as “one of our most outstanding thinkers”.

 

Nuclear assault on the poor, workers and UK economy

THE ECOLOGIST

Donnachadh McCarthy

1st November 2013

Former Deputy Chair of the Liberal Democrats, Donnachadh McCarthy, writes to Lib Dem DECC Secretary of State Ed Davey about Hinkley C nuclear power station.

365306Dear Ed,

I hope this finds you well?

Re: Nuclear assault on Poor, Workers and UK Economy

I could hardly sleep last night thinking about the enormity of the crime committed yesterday by you, George Osborne and Ed Miliband over your agreement to massively subsidise China and EDF to build poisonous nuclear plants in the UK.

The proposed £420 billion (minimum) subsidy for 12 nuclear poison-production plants, would have created huge employment in the UK’s energy efficiency and renewables industries.

This nuclear subsidy will to go to foreign firms as we no longer have the technological capacity in this old 1950s dirty technology.

This figure does not include the massive free open-ended blank cheque for free insurance to the French/Chinese consortium nor the increase in subsidy if/when renewables fall below current grid-price.

Thus the decision was a direct attack on UK workers with thousands of jobs sent overseas.

Secondly the decision means millions of the UK poor who could have had their energy bills eliminated through energy efficiency and home and decentralised renewables will now be kept in fuel-poverty for another generation.

Yesterday’s announcement of the tearing up of the Lib Dem and Tory manifesto promises, and the coalition agreement for no subsidies to nuclear was accompanied by no basic cost/benefit analysis.

Where is the comparison for jobs created, carbon saved, fuel poverty eliminated and UK jobs created by investing £420 billion in nuclear poison creation v energy efficiency / regulation / renewables?!

Any responsible political party not in the pockets of their in-house party nuclear-lobbyists, would carry out such an independent analysis and publish it for scrutiny.

But the sorry fact is we have no such party of government – as all 3 parties are infected with internal bought nuclear lobbyists.

The list of other reasons why yesterday should be marked as a black day for the UK and its people is overwhelming:

  • Nowhere to store the nuclear poisons.
  • Nuclear poisons will have to be stored “safely” for generations to come.
  • Over 90% of DECC (The Department of Energy and Climate Change) budget already consumed with storing / dealing with already produced nuclear poisons, with costs escalating every year, with no end in sight to this inflation.
  • 1 in 100 nuclear plants have disastrously failed
  • the nuclear plants proposed is a new unproven design
  • the nuclear plants proposed are already years behind in Finland and France.
  • the nuclear plants proposed are already billions over budget in Finland and France.
  • Safe reliable existing alternative technologies already exist.
  • France, Germany and Italy all have rejected this 1950s technology and are pursuing renewables and energy efficiency instead thus creating thousands of jobs for their citizens.
  • Nuclear plays an irresponsible catastrophic Russian Roulette with our nation. A Fukushima catastrophe in Somerset would cause permanent evacuation of large areas of the county.
  • A Fukushima in Somerset would destroy offshore fishing industry of UK, Ireland and Scotland
  • Nuclear power stations are a national existential terrorist security risk – the costs of making them safe from a Jumbo Jet suicide mission is enormous
  • Many of the nuclear power stations are being built on low-lying coastal land that cannot be protected without huge costs to future generations, from the sea levels now inexorably rising due to the climate crisis.
  • The Glinsk renewable energy storage project in Ireland has the capacity of 2 nuclear power stations without any of the over-whelming risks and disadvantages above.
  • Every day of the week in my work as an eco-auditor, I encounter colossal waste of energy, from pointless daylight lighting to energy systems on in offices 24/7 to innumerable empty fridges to air-conditioned stores with wide open doors.

I am in no doubt you are building nuclear power stations to provide energy to be criminally wasted.

The list goes on and on. This is one of the largest ever criminal attacks on the UK state and the UK public by The Prostitute State.

Could I implore you to re-think this disastrous nightmarish decision and respect the promise to oppose nuclear white-elephants that you made each time you stood for election?

Yours sincerely,

Donnachadh McCarthy FRSA.

Donnachadh says: Please engage with your local MPs or those whom you know on this hugely important issue. Please feel free to use the letter I sent to Ed Davey as a basis if you wish.

This open letter was also published by Permaculture Magazine.

The Birth of a Police State: UK Police to be Granted Sweeping New Powers

Scriptonite Daily

Nov 11 2013

PS4

The UK Government is about to pass legislation which will make any behaviour perceived to potentially ‘cause nuisance or annoyance’ a criminal offence. The Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill also grants local authorities, police and even private security firms sweeping powers to bar citizens from assembling lawfully in public spaces. The Bill has successfully passed through the House of Commons without issue, and is now in the latter stages of review by the House of Lords, after which it will receive Royal Assent and become Law.  Those who refuse orders under the new rules will face arrest, fines and even prison time.

The Ever Increasing Powers

PS5

Since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which introduced Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) the government has invented and legislated for a litany of such orders covering everything from dog poo to drug addiction, including but not limited to: Control Orders; Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Orders; Intervention Orders; Crack House Closure Orders; Premise Closure Orders; Brothel Closure Orders; Gang Related Violence Injunctions; Designated Public Place Orders; Special Interim Management Orders; Gating Orders; Dog Control Orders; Letter Clearing Notices; Noise Abatement Orders; Graffiti/Defacement Removal Notices; Directions to Leave and Dispersal Orders.

The Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, purports to simplify this legacy of New Labour’s legislative promiscuity. In reality, it creates a series of wildly ambiguous, generic orders which grant officers of the state and private sector even greater powers to issue tougher sentences, with fewer checks and balances to protect citizens.

Being Annoying is now Illegal

PS6

The Bill introduces Injunctions to Prevent Nuisance and Annoyance (IPNAS) to replace ABSO’S. Almost no one will be sad to say goodbye to ASBO’s. The orders, designed to allow police to tackle anti-social behaviour, simply became a means of criminalising youthful indiscretion – and eventually a means of criminalising anything people found annoying. Some of the bizarre abuses of this power include:

The ASBO has allowed the line between criminal behaviour and annoying behaviour to become hopelessly blurred – and the IPNAs will only serve to increase the problem. We have seen the abuses permitted under ASBO legislation, the test for which included wording to the effect that ASBOs could only be issued where an actual act of ‘harassment, alarm or distress’ had occurred. IPNAs have a much weaker test, applicable where on the ‘balance of probabilities’ a person has or might engage in behaviour ‘capable of causing annoyance’ to another person. How many times a day could this legislation apply to any of us? Eating with our mouths open, talking too loudly into our phones in a public space, walking too slowly or quickly or belching without saying ‘pardon me’. All of this may very well cause annoyance – but soon it might well also be illegal.

The orders can be issued to anyone aged 10 or over (and we all know how well 10 year olds are at being annoying), and there is no limit on how long an IPNA can be applied to a person for. A person could receive an IPNA aged 10 and retain it their entire life.

Whereas an ASBO could only desist the subject from certain actions, the IPNA includes ‘positive obligations’ (p10). This means the subject of an IPNA can be found in breach not simply for doing things they have been banned from doing, but from not doing things that the IPNA states they must. This makes an IPNA much closer to probation and other post-conviction arrangements than a civil order.

An IPNA can be applied for by Local Authorities, police, some transport bodies and some NHS authorities.

The consequences of breaching an IPNA are serious. The breaching of an IPNA has been added to the conditions for securing possession of a home – meaning a 10 year old child breaching their IPNA could result in the entire family being evicted from their council house. Breaching the orders can also result in jail time for anyone over 14.

Even the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), giving evidence on the proposals, argued that this could lead to further criminalisation of children and called on the government to think again.

In a letter to the Observer, Children’s Commissioner Dr Maggie Atkinson and a host of children’s charities wrote “”We acknowledge that antisocial behaviour can blight the lives of individuals and communities, but this bill is not the answer. It promotes intolerance of youth, is a blow for civil liberties and will damage children’s relationship with the police. Children learn the importance of right and wrong from their parents, teachers and communities. We do not need to create more laws to do it.”

But the plans move along unaltered.

Kiss Goodbye to Freedom of Assembly

PS7

Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs), and new Dispersal Orders will replace Designated Public Space Orders, Dog Control Orders, Gating Orders and a host of other orders intended to keep aggressive drunken people, or drug dealers or dog poo off of our streets. But it is plain that the target for these laws is no longer the person peddling illegal drugs, but the people sharing politically challenging ideas.

These new powers present the most significant threat to lawful assembly and protest in modern history.

Public Space Protection Orders

PSPOs will be granted where ‘activities carried on or likely to be carried on in a public place will have or have had a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality’ (p21). They can be used to restrict an activity or require people to perform an activity in a certain way. They require substantially less consultation than current alcohol free zones or dog control zones and rather than applying to everyone, they can be applied to specific groups of people (the homeless, the unemployed, racial/religious groups etc.) – opening the door for discrimination. These rules could see homeless people or young people lawfully excluded from public spaces.

PSPOs are subject to ‘on the spot’ fines, rather than attendance at a Magistrates Court, reducing the scrutiny and checks on police power.

These orders are also by no means short term. They can be applied for up to three years, and continued for another three years at the end of their term.

The orders have been heavily challenged by Liberty and The Manifesto Club on the basis that they will seriously infringe upon people’s freedom to assemble, associate and protest. The Ramblers (the walking charity) have also given written evidence to the government raising their fears about the further appropriation of public highways, by ways and footpaths under the PSPO powers.

Dispersal Orders

Under the current Direction to Leave powers, anyone over 10 years of age can be asked to disperse from a ‘locality’ and stay dispersed for a period not exceeding 48 hours. Current Dispersal Orders mean a Police Superintendent (or an officer with specific written authority from the SI) can disperse groups of two or more people in areas where there has been ‘persistent anti-social behaviour’ or take home any young person under the age of 16 who is in a dispersal zone between 9pm and 6am. Anyone failing to comply with a Dispersal Order faces a fine of up to £2,500 or up to three months in prison.

Downing Street clearly do not feel this is tough enough.

The new Dispersal Powers mean police constables and even Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) can issue dispersal orders if they think a group of two or more persons might harass, alarm or distress others in the vicinity (p16). The PCSO or constable can specify how long the person/group must remain out of the designated area, and by which route they must leave, and also confiscate any items of their property which they deem anti-social. Failure to comply with any element of these orders results in a fine of up to £5,000 or three months in prison. The new legislation also fails to define ‘locality’ – meaning a person could be excluded from a city, a county or even a whole country (p17). In fact, York couldn’t even wait for the new legislation to pass and is already implementing the powers.

These new laws effectively end freedom of assembly in England and Wales, as any lawful assembly can be instantly redefined as illegal on the spot by some part time PCSO, people’s personal possessions can be confiscated, and anyone who dares to challenge the process will end up in jail.

What will it Take?

C55

One could be forgiven for despairingly enquiring ‘what will it take for the slumbering British public to awake to the fact that the legal and physical infrastructure of a police state is being built around them?’

Many believe they have rights to protest, assemble and associate that they lost a decade ago, simply because they have never actually attempted to claim these rights. They remain imaginary freedoms, never cashed in. As someone who has found themselves arrested, locked up and later cleared by a court twice in recent years for peaceful protest (see 1st and 2nd arrests) – I discovered for myself how much things had changed while I wasn’t looking. So without getting everyone to attend a protest and get arrested, we rely on communicating the changes to those who might not experience them directly.

But while the BBC, our main broadcaster, has devoted its resources to stick a correspondent up the arse of anyone with the faintest connection to the Royal Baby – no such resources have been devoted to informing on the curtailing of our most basic freedoms. Defenders of the BBC may argue they are there to cover the news, not make it – this is an outright lie.

The Media create stories as well as cover them, many people glean what is important from how much it is being talked about on the news and in the papers. Imagine if journalists were door-stepping David Cameron, human rights campaigners and police authorities all day every day asking what on earth was going to happen with our human rights? If the pages of our newspapers were not filled with fury over imaginary benefit cheats and immigrants, but our eroded civil liberties? Things would look very, very different.

In the meantime, it’s up to all of us with an interest to shout it from the roof tops. We have a hell of a fight on our hands here, and most folks still don’t even know it.

SIGN THE PETITION TO OPPOSE THIS PIECE OF LEGISLATION BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

‘Cannabis for Shiva:’ UK couple cleared of $450,000 drug dealing

Written by RT News

Published time: November 11, 2013

31_si

A British couple have been cleared of dealing cannabis after claiming that they planned to burn their crop in sacrifice to the Hindu god Shiva. Prosecutors alleged that they made some $450,000 over six years by dealing drugs.

The woman, Katarzyna Dryden-Chouen, 46, said that she intended to  make the sacrifice because the world was about to end. She  admitted to growing the cannabis, and told Gloucester Crown Court  that the “religious sacrifice” was to be offered to Shiva  before December 21, 2012 – when she believed the world would end.

The Mayan calendar reached the end of its 5,126-year-long cycle  on December 21, and Dryden-Chouen  said that she intended to  create a Homa (burning pit) for a ceremony.

The plants found in her and her husband Clive’s home – 15  established plants and 41 juvenile ones – had the potential to  yield around 2.9 pounds of the drug – an amount that would fetch  about $9,600, according to the prosecution. Police also alleged  that nearly £13,000 ($21,000) in cash was found in their home in  Littledean, near the Welsh border.

“Just about every room in the house had cannabis in it,”   when police ransacked the premises, according to prosecutor Paul  Grumbar.  The money was found near a “shrine.”

Clive Dryden-Chouen, 60, claimed that the £277,000 ($443,000)  which passed through their hands over the last six years came  from his business based on converting cars to run on liquid  petroleum gas.  He said that he did not have a bank account  and was paid in cash.

Evidence given in the trial was built on diary extracts from the  wife, which documented details of her cannabis growing and  selling. However, she declared in front of a jury that the  passages were a “fiction” as she spent extended periods of time  medicating without eating.

Katarzyna Dryden-Chouen also claimed to be in possession of a pet  mouse who could talk, and the couple denied knowing that cannabis  possession was illegal. While she and her husband admitted to  personal use of cannabis, both were cleared of intending to  supply the drug after a three-week trial.

At the beginning of the case, the Dryden-Chouens pleaded guilty  to cultivating the cannabis crop, but denied charges of intent to  supply and of money laundering. Police conducted the raid on  their home in August 2012.

Judge Alastair McGrigor warned the couple that they may still  face jail on the charge of cultivating the plants. “This  matter is not entirely over,” he said in court, according to  the Daily Mail. “You are going to be sentenced in relation to  the material that was found in the house. All options are still  open to the court.

Judge Napolitano: How to get fired from Fox in under 5 mins

 

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Asking questions as Judge Andrew Napolitano did in a recent broadcast on his now  cancelled daily show may very well be the reason behind his recent dismissal  from Fox. Though specific details are hard to come by because the Judge has yet  to give any interviews on the matter, it’s believed that his refusal to bow to  commonly manufactured media narratives is among one of several key reasons he  his no longer with the network.

The following  5-Minute Speech that  Got Napolitano Fired from Fox News is one that should not only be forwarded and  shared with every single man, woman and child in this country, but taught and  expounded upon in every social studies, civics and government class from first  grade through college.

Killed for watching TV: North Korea executes 80 people in public ‘for viewing South Korean movies and owning Bibles’

By  Ted Thornhill

PUBLISHED: 09:46, 11 November 2013

  • In one, people including women and  children were herded into a stadium and forced to watch eight people die from  machine gun fire
  • The executions are reported to have taken  place in several cities

Several large-scale public executions of  around 80 people have taken place in North Korea, according to a South Korean  newspaper.

In one, woman and children were herded into a  sports stadium and forced to watch people being shot dead by machine gun  fire.

The executions took place on Sunday  November 3, a source told the  paper.

A South Korean soldier mans the border with North Korea, where reports have emerged of 80 people being publicly executed 

A South Korean soldier mans the border with North Korea,  where reports have emerged of 80 people being publicly executed

JoongAng Ilbo could not confirm the deaths,  but said its source is familiar with the internal affairs of North Korea and had  recently visited the country.

Why the executions took place is difficult to  ascertain, but the paper speculates that they may have been carried out to quell  unrest and stop capitalist ideology from growing, as they took place in areas of  recent economic growth.

Some of the deaths may also have been a  punishment for the perceived crimes of watching South Korean movies,  distributing pornography, using prostitutes and possessing Bibles.

North Koreans are forced to adhere to the Juche ideology - a doctrine which mixes Marxism with the worship of North Korea's founder Kim Il Sung and his descendents 

North Koreans are forced to adhere to  a doctrine  which mixes Marxism with the worship of North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung and  his descendents. Pictured are soldiers marking the 65th anniversary of the  country’s founding in Pyongyang

JoongAng Ilbo reported that in Wonsan, in  Kangwon Province, 10,000 people were ordered into Shinpoong Stadium, and forced  to watch eight people, who were tied to stakes with sacks over their heads,  being killed by machine guns.

Its source said: ‘I heard from the residents  that they watched in terror as the corpses were riddled by machine-gun fire that  they were hard to identify afterwards.’

Other executions took place in Chongjin in  North Hamgyong Province, Sariwon in North Hwanghae Province and Pyongsong in  South Pyongan.

North Koreans are forced to adhere to the  Juche ideology – a doctrine which mixes Marxism with the worship of North  Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung and his descendents.

But for the past seven years, a  Colorado-based preacher, Pastor Foley, and his supporters have been been  releasing hydrogen balloons carrying bundles of Bibles into North Korea.

Last year, they dropped an estimated 50,000  Bibles into the country.

Despite its illegality, Pastor Foley  estimates that there are 100,000 Christians in North Korea.